Thank God for air-con

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So Rome is in the middle of a heatwave right now, 33+ degrees, accorsing the modern day Romans in July/August weather in June. So I might have to hand in my membership to the pale club for a while, even with the 50 spf sun lotion.

But talking about the weather is skipping ahead of things. After a couple in the hotel bar last night we had an innterupted nights sleep with people talking loaudly in the rooms and showering at stupid o'clock. In the end we got up 7:15 and had a typical continetal breakfast. I had my first italian cappiccinio, which was a bit too strong and way too sweet. But thats the only part of italian food/drink that's let me down.

We were booked on a 10am tour of ancient Rome so after breakfast we got our Roma cards and headed to meet the tour. First stop was to meet our tour guide Alexjandro (if at this point you've got Gaga stuck in your head I'm sorry) and get our headsets and stickers. Then we followed Alex and his umberella to the Colusseum. Alex was a very good tour guide, whose sarcastic comments and observations kept us entertained. Fact of the day numberr one: Vespasian was the first emperor to create public toilets, to this day Roman's say "I'm going to the vespaspian" rather that I'm going the toilet.

After an hour and a halfish in the roasting rome sun the tour headed to the ruins of the forum. This was the part of the trip my mum had been really looking forward too. After an intro to the site we saw the site of Julius Ceaser's tomb and then the heat got a bit much for me and we had to leave.

After a quick lunch/basking in the aircon we induldged in the medterrianian tradition of siestia, also involving aircon. After cooling down we headed to Tranjan's markets. I think its a failing of the associated museum ratherr than myself that I'm still not sure who Trajan is, other than an emperor. But the museum did serve to highlight how much better at everything the Roaman's were compared to their contemporaries. Fact of the day number two: In 800bc Rome had a population of 1 million, the next place to reach that figure was london in the 1800's.

We then people watched for a bit. My mum pointed out that kids all over the world love chasing pidgeons. Followed a few mins later be me pointing out that parents all over the world resort to pointing at random police cars/ people in uniform and saying "best stop that now or they'll come shout".

The most notable things that happened after that were a, I has lasagne with 10 layerrs of pasta in, way more than at home and b, we found the hostel I stayed in last time I was in Rome, but sadly its shut.

That all for now. Off to catch up on some sleep. Spanish steps and fountains tomorrow

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